The Law: The Court's Uncompromising Libertarian

William O. Douglas was the court's most undeviating liberal voice right
up to his sudden retirement last week. In his later years, some critics
came to view Douglas as a dangerous radical. Yet Douglas did not see
the court as a tool for radical social change, "but rather as a
mechanism to keep open the democratic process," says Yale Law Professor
Thomas I. Emerson. To this end his decisions supported free speech, the
broadest possible interpretation of individual constitutional rights
and, less often noted, far-reaching Government power to regulate the economy.